one fine summer, when I used to walk out of an evening to catch the last
light of the sun, gemming the green slopes or russet lawns, and gilding
tower or tree, while the blue sky, gradually turning to purple and gold,
or skirted with dusky grey, hung its broad marble pavement over all, as
we see it in the great master of Italian landscape. But to come to a
more particular explanation of the subject:--

The first head I ever tried to paint was an old woman with the upper
part of the face shaded by her bonnet, and I certainly laboured [at] it
with great perseverance. It took me numberless sittings to do it. I
have it by me still, and sometimes look at it with surprise, to think
how much pains were thrown away to little purpose,--yet not altogether
in vain if it taught me to see good in everything, and to know that
there is nothing vulgar in Nature seen with the eye of science or of
true art. Refinement creates beauty everywhere: it is the grossness of
the spectator that discovers nothing but grossness in the object. Be
this as it may, I spared no pains to do my best. If art was long, I
thought that life was so too at that moment. I got in the general
effect the first day; and pleased and surprised enough I was at my
success. The rest was a work of time--of weeks and months (if need
were), of patient toil and careful finishing. I had seen an old head by
Rembrandt at Burleigh House, and if I could produce a head at all like
Rembrandt in a year, in my lifetime, it would be glory and felicity and
wealth and fame enough for me! The head l had seen at Burleigh was an
exact and wonderful facsimile of nature, and I resolved to make mine (as
nearly as I could) an exact facsimile of nature. I did not then, nor do
I now believe, with Sir Joshua, that the perfection of art consists in
giving general appearances without individual details, but in giving
general appearances with individual details. Otherwise, I had done my
work the first day. But I saw something more in nature than general